1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for extracting major white regions and document elements from a document image.
2. Related Art
A method for segmenting text regions has been proposed in Baird et al., "Image Segmentation by Shape Directed Covers," 10th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 820-825, 16-21 Jun. 1990. The method disclosed in Baird analyzes the white space in a document image, but does not clearly disclose stopping rules for text region segmentation.
Other methods have been disclosed for segmenting document elements in a document image, but none analyze the white areas in a document image and segment document elements by extracting and analyzing major white regions. White regions are those areas of a document which contain no connected components.